[By Rob Roehm; originally posted July 11, 2011 at the REH Two-Gun Raconteur blog. This version updated and expanded to include a previously unavailable item from the January 1930 issue of The Junto and a recently discovered letter to the Brownwood Bulletin.]

Part 4

The September 1929 Junto caused a bit of a ruckus with its members. Not only did Booth Mooney use “hell” and “damn” in a poem, but Norbert Sydow sent in a drawing depicting a woman with her breasts exposed (above). Just how much of the chiding on the mailing list was actual outrage is not known, but Truett Vinson wasn’t playing that game:

“The Junto” may be a cheap imitation of “Whiz Bang,” but you can’t read Bob Howard, Clyde Smith and Lenore Preece in Capt. Billy’s magazine! They take the honors in this issue. If Bradford wants to make something of The Junto, why doesn’t he write something? Until then, we may only conjecture what that something is! (To Harold: Let Mooney cuss. It won’t hurt him. You are quite a proficient cusser yourself!) The picture is rather good, and not objectionable to me, at least. Draw some more, Sydow! If “The Junto” is to “pick out” one good cause, let that cause be: downfall of prohibition and blue laws! TV.

The October 1929 issue has two contributions by Vinson, a bit in “The Commentary,” as well as new comments on the mailing list. The issue also has Clyde Smith’s “Flasback” which features Vinson, Preece, and REH having a few drinks at a bar. Vinson’s piece of “The Commentary” reveals his taste in poetry. He first disagrees with Juntite Alex Doktor’s positive assessment of Emily Dickinson, then rattles off a short list of poets he considered top notch:

I disagree loudly with Alex M. Doktor or Conrad Aiken in regard to Emily Dickinson. So far as I am concerned, there are only four American poets: Whitman, Poe, Benet (Stephen Vincent), and Bob Howard.

Later in his life, I’ve heard that Vinson characterized REH’s writing as “trash”; based on the two comments above, I’m guessing he didn’t always feel that way. Or perhaps he was just being kind.

Besides the above comment, “New Orleans Sketches” also appeared. (Warning: Some of the language here is offensive. This was written in Texas in 1930 and shows the casual racism that was prevalent at the time):

I am sitting near the back seat of a “rubberneck” bus, touring through the quaint and old world streets of New Orleans. Across from me is a hospital attendant (as I afterward learn) from St. Petersburg, Florida, who assumes a bored air as the blatant voice of our guide rushes at us through the August mid-day heat. But I am all attention as we turn off Canal Street near the smoky Southern Railway depot, and presently pass a depressing stone building with bare walls. A tall iron fence surrounds the place, and there is no sign of life. Our guide informs us there are nuns within the walls who will never come out into the New Orleans sunshine again, but who will spend their days praying for the sins of the rest of us who pass so noisily outside. The guide favors us with a childishly sarcastic laugh as he divulges this information.

Presently we pass the “tenement district” of New Orleans, sordid brick and rotten plank buildings, with dirty outside stairs and family washes hanging out in plenty. Our guide proudly likens New Orleans tenements with those of New York, to the utter disgust of a New York sight-seer who snorts a proud snort. There are no tenements so rotten and dirty and sordid and plentiful as New York’s!

We stop at a very old cemetery in the very midst of the negro tenement district. The guide tells us that the neighborhood is tough, and has to be cleaned out every little while. We can easily see that it is even more rottenly sordid than the white tenements, but we do not stop to investigate its toughness. We pass through the cemetery. Louisiana’s first governor is buried here, and we find numerous graves of early duelists.

The big yellow bus whirls us past the city’s points of interest. Our guide proudly shows us the Napoleon house, the haunted house, the site of the once famous French Opera House, now a dirty vacant lot with vaudeville heralds plastered on boards, and the very old house wherein Ben Turpin came into the world. New Orleans is proud of this squalid building in the French Quarter. Its place in the New Orleans sun is held equally with the more modern and more beautiful and more luxurious residence of Marguerite Clark out on St. Charles Avenue!

We are driven down to the docks, where brawny negro longshoremen unload the boats lined up on Old Man River. The Louisian August sun is beating straight down on the Mississippi, and in triumphant mood the Old Man swoops great heat waves back at us. The niggers are soaked in sweat, but they do not mind. The rubberneck guide’s tongue is never still as we go up one street and down the other. We pass out of the city, on past the Ford assembling plant (when will he ever be assembled?) and the American Sugar Refining Company and the saw mills, through the New Orleans battlegrounds. We stop at the ruins of the old, old plantation where the British general made his headquarters. Behind it is the most beautiful grove of trees, planted in mathematical lines, I have ever seen. The dirty Southern Railway passes nearby, and they are to cut down this grove to make way for oil tanks.

Back on Canal Street in the late afternoon. The Irish cops are coming out of their holes, where they have been during the great heat of the day. A dozen street cars clang and bump up and down Canal.

Late shoppers and theater patrons and office clerks are scurrying along the side walks and across the narrow intersecting streets in single jumps and across the mighty Canal in installments. The hospital attendant from St. Petersburg, in the meanwhile, has had occasion to introduce himself, and I accord him the gracious privilege of knowing me. He emerges from the bus at the sumptuous Monteleone Hotel, which towers above the French Quarter like a peacock. The New Yorker stalks out of the bus at the Roosevelt, and I tool on down Canal Street to my more modest abode.

That same issue has a description of Vinson’s August vacation, entitled “Through Colorado”:

Colorado Springs, Colo.
August 26th

I suppose one could term this place as being ideal for a summer vacation: it is cool, the trees and flowers and grass are green and in full bloom all the summer. There is “wonderful” scenery; and if you are so minded, there are golf courses and polo fields and riding lanes and dance pavilions and etc. I have not been so minded, and so I have only indulged in an orgy of viewing mountain scenery. But the tourists! They pour in here (even as I poured) from Illinois, Nebraska, Kansas, Ohio, Missouri, Oklahoma, and Texas. They trample you down on every street corner; and when you are really enjoying some magnificent mountain scene, a bunch of them break in on your thoughts with stupid and inane remarks. Of course I grant all tourists the same privilege of viewing scenery as myself, but let them view scenery intelligently—if that could be possible! That will never be possible, and so I shall take future vacations “far from the maddening crowd”—if that could be possible!

Walsenburg, Colo.

Here the tourists look out of the train windows and remark: “What an old and dirty town! I’ll be glad when we get to Colorado Springs!” Walsenburg is where they dig coal out of the earth, and where has taken place some bitter labor battles—always to the ultimate advantage of The Colorado Fuel and Iron Co! But what do tourists care for Poles and Slovaks and Wops who dig the coal that makes their engine steam?

Denver, Colo.

Just a big smoky city—enlightened only by Judge Lindsay. Downtown Denver presents a depressing effect—the buildings are soaked with coal dust and smoke. They lack the freshness of buildings in Texas cities. Denver is noted for its theaters, but they are far surpassed by the theaters of San Antonio.

Cripple Creek, Colo.

Here they loaded about twenty wide-eyed tourists (including me) into cages and dropped us 1800 feet down the shaft of a gold mine. Amidst feminine squeals, a young, hard-faced miner explained the working details of the mine. During his discourse he kept referring to the fact that he had been talking that way since six o’clock in the morning, without anything to eat. But when a fellow worker offered to relieve him, he refused. He liked it!

Above the ground, on every side, squalid and dreary and dirty houses spread themselves. Dirty faced little girls waved at us as we drove away.

* * *

A train excursion through the Royal Gorge. I have been looking out the window at magnificent granite cliffs a half mile above the train, the Arkansas River roaring at the foot of the granite wall on the opposite side of the train. A pretty brunette rises up from her seat across from me, and leans far out of the window. I am presented with a lovely view of her legs: sheer black hose to her knees, held up by black garters, studded with imitation diamonds, and then firm, bare legs! Why, then, should I be interested in a granite wall?

Junto editor Lenore Preece added a short addendum: “Effect of ‘Junto’ on a hitherto modest young man.” Vinson addresses that comment and discusses the rest of the issue on the mailing list:

This issue lacks only a poem or sketch by Bob Howard. If Lenore Preece continues, she will be a very distinguished poet. She has a certain powerful quality usually only found in veteran male poets; very seldom in poets of the “talker” sex. (To Juntites: If you’ll come around some time, in a sort of quiet and secret manner, I’ll show you some pictures of Clyde Smith rather different from the distinguished one in this Junto [see page 66 of “So Far the Poet”]) I am glad Junto readers liked my Colorado and New Orleans sketches. I contend that a description of a woman’s leg can be as artistic and beautiful as a description of a granite wall a half mile high—and how much more interesting! For the benefit of Junto readers: I was quite a distinguished connoisseur of feminine legs and other appurtenances before I ever heard of The Junto! Bradford must have seen Denver through rose colored glasses. I grant that Denver’s parks are beautiful and quiet and clean. But downtown Denver’s buildings are dingy with coal dust. The federal buildings are positively black, except the new post office, and it is rapidly becoming that way. However, show me a city with manufacturing plants and meat packing plants, that is not dirty and smoky! Texas cities are cleaner than Denver and other northern cities because we burn oil in locomotives and gas in our stoves. To Bradford: Your remark [“Truett must have been thinking of that girl when he wrote that Denver was a smoky city.”] is worthy of a Chamber of Commerce. Now why didn’t you come to my defense and side in with me about San Antonio? You do not have the true civic pride, my boy! And another thing. I saw Denver three days before I saw the girl’s legs! TV

The only new item in the November 1929 issue comes from the mailing list:

Harold’s article [“The Religion of the Future”] is the best thing in this issue. To the lady poets: For God’s sake, write about something other than love for at least one issue. This issue is clean because it contained nothing by Bob Howard, Clyde Smith or myself! But wait! We shan’t disappoint you in the future! Booth: Write something sensible. You can do it.

Based on comments in Lenore Preece’s surviving letters to Clyde Smith, issues of The Junto tended to come out a week or so before the month on the cover; so, the November issue was probably in circulation at the end of September. On November 19, Harold Preece wrote to Clyde Smith from Austin:

Your satire, “Heigho’s Adventures Among The Redmen,” [perhaps a prequel to “Heigho Among the Redmen” in “So Far the Poet”] is amusing, but disjointed. You should have used more connectives. Too, the ending was not in good taste. No doubt but that you, Truett, and Bob, are “the three cleverest men in the world,” but why remind us of it?

In a January 18, 1930 letter to Smith, Preece gives us some insight into the three:

As for that premonition about your early death, forget it. It is merely your Calvinist heredity asserting itself. To the same source may be traced your fatalistic views. The great fault is that you, Truett, and, to a lesser extent, Bob, comprise a Mutual Admiration Society. You are a particularly zealous member of the society, as evidenced by your articles, extolling “the three,” in The Junto. All of you, particularly Truett and yourself, need to consider yourselves in the cold light of self-examination.

The January 1930 issue has a collection of quotes from The Scourge of Christ compiled by Vinson:

“The Scourge of Christ,” by Paul Richard
By Truett Vinson

Compiler’s Note: these extracts are from a book I picked up in Colorado Springs, in a book store owned by two feminine creatures, one an old maid (I presumed), the other a very charming and pretty girl—an unusual ornament for a book store. So I lingered and found this book. The author is a Frenchman whose portrait is like that of Walt Whitman’s, with high white forehead and long, white beard. A famous philosopher and mystic.

“The Christianity of Christ ceased to be when Asia ceased to teach it.”

“The Sons of God have always been vagabonds.”

“In a Christian country Christ would be soon sent to prison for vagrancy.”

“The vagabond, when rich, is called a tourist.”

“This, O Tolstoy! Thou camest to understand when death drew near thee, that to enter the Heaven of the Divine Vagabond, thou must, like him, be a wanderer on the highways.”

“A wise man amidst fools appears a dunce.”

“‘Woe unto the rich!’ Not Lenin, but Christ, said this.”

“When the rich assemble to concern themselves with the business of the poor it is called charity. When the poor assemble to concern themselves with the business of the rich it is called anarchy.”

“A lucrative complicity with the world is what is called professional duty—Duty is but another name for profit.”

“I call duty the act for which no profit is expected, either in this world or in the next.”

“Thy luxury—the hunger of another.”

“Soul and body are one. They toil and spin together . . . He who sells his labour sells at the same time his body and soul. Some sell only their body. They are called prostitutes.”

“Each society has the criminals it deserves.”

“Legal murder is the legitimate father of the illegal ones.”

“No one yet has been able to kill Cain . . . To avoid recognition, Cain today covers himself with a uniform.”

“‘Civilization’—the privilege of a few peoples estimated by the number of their firearms.”

“‘Barbarism’—not to have your firearms up to date.”

“The act that gives death is moral, the act that gives life is not—so think the civilized.”

“Among the Christians the office of high-priest is filled by the butcher.”

“‘Man shall not live by bread alone,’ saith the Christian, ‘But by every creature that can enter into the mouth of man.’”

“Tigers kill and eat. Men eat and slay. ‘We have not killed’.”

“When man kills the brutes of nature it is called sport. When Nature kills brutes of men it is called a catastrophe.”

“Several men betrayed Jesus—but not one woman. When Jesus was delivered, among all his disciples, women alone stood as men.”

From “The Scourge of Christ,” by Paul Richard.
Alfred A. Knopf, New York. $2.50

This was followed by “In Defense of the Christ” in the February issue:

Most certainly I do not have any quarrel with the esteemed editor of “The Junto”; but to her remark that Jesus spewed forth from a manger, or words similar, I must make the charge that she is of the type of radicals who seek to shock people by making aspersive remarks concerning religion. I am not defending man’s religion, because I do not believe in most of it, and I am not defending Christ in the way that most defenses are made. Christ needs no defense. But the editor’s remark is not shocking; rather, it is disgusting and nauseating. It would be disgusting when applied to any case of birth, even if the child born were a future murderer, for the reason that the mother’s painful loins should be entitled to more respect. Childbirth is a very noble thing; the noblest and bravest achievement of woman, even tho a majority of the world’s inhabitants do not even know what the word “noble” means.

Most people think of Christ as a God, which is a mistake, because then they say: “He is a God and therefore perfect. I am man and can never be perfect. I will believe in him, and that will constitute my religion. When I am not in church, I will do as I please.” I do not think Christ was perfect, nor do I think we could follow him to the letter. If we all were to be chaste and continent as Christ taught, where would we be? But his other teachings, if followed, would make a far more decent place of this rotten world.

To the radicals, concerning religion, a word or two: Confine your efforts to the nauseating hypocrisies of church people. Then you will be achieving something.

There was probably a March issue, but no one’s got a copy of it, so we close the Junto file here and pick up with the 1930 Census. Of the Vinsons’ four children, only the second daughter, Grady, has left the house (married in Big Lake, Texas). The death of Lena’s fiancée probably has something to do with her still living at the folks’ house. The Census was enumerated on April 5, 1930; here’s the breakdown:

Ward 4, Brownwood
Wade D., 61, (head) not working
Abbie L., 67, (wife)
Lena M., 38, (daughter) Book-Keeper at Furniture Co.
W. Truett, 24, (son) Book-Keeper at Wholesale Grocery
L. Blanche, 22, (daughter) Book-Keeper at Abstract Co.

They’ve even got a cousin rooming in the house; he’s employed at the post office, not as a bookkeeper.

The last bits on Vinson in 1930 come from Preece’s letters to Smith. On August 26, Preece wrote from Austin: “I regret that I had not arrived when you and Truett called.” On November 7, he asked, “Did Truett vote Socialist this year?”

And this item in Bruce M. Francis’s “Sports for Sportsmen” column in the Brownwood Bulletin for December 9, 1930:

Instead of hammering out a sports column for today we are going to let a couple of our correspondents handle the day’s assignment of putting together the usual amount of information that one and all await with outstretched hands each afternoon. The first correspondent today is one who has broken into print before, one Truett Vinson, who lives out to 1409 Second Street. The other is Bud Canady, sports editor of the Howard Payne Yellow Jacket. Vinson writes in a rather lengthy epistle that contains some interesting facts, statistics and what not on the Yellow Jackets while Bud has contributed his All-Texas Conference selections. Vinson’s letter is given first.

“Dear Mr. Francis:”

“It’s all over now but the shouting, and I’ll do my shouting here, space and your indulgence permitting. We had all better do our shouting now; it may be many a moon from now when a Brownwood football team wins three consecutive championships! (Unless Howard Payne repeats for the fourth time next year; a not impossible feat!)

“The Hot Stove Grid Team likes statistics, and I pass on a few here which I have compiled for my own satisfaction: The three time champions of the Texas Conference (in 1928, 1929 and 1930) have amassed a grand total of 691 points against all opponents during the three championship years. Their opponents have managed to accumulate 165 against them in the same period of time, 96 of these points being made by S.M.U. and Texas U. in four games. (And S.M.U. and Texas U. usually have good ball teams!) Compiling our statistics only in Texas Conference games for these three years, we find that the Yellow Jackets have scored 340 points while their T.C. opponents could only manage for 56! 49 touchdowns against 8 touchdowns, not counting the extra points, field goals, safeties and what have you! No Texas Conference team in these three years has made more than two touchdowns in one game against the Jackets; in fact no one of these teams has made more than two touchdowns even in the complete three year period; Southwestern made two touchdowns in the ’28 game. They haven’t scored since. Simmons managed a touchdown in ’28 and one in ’30. Austin could not cross the last white line until ’30. Trinity could only garner one touchdown in three years, in the ’29 game. The Saints scored once in ’29 and once in ’30. Are the Jackets three year champions in cold figures as well as in name?

“I didn’t see your 10,000 crowd at the H.P.C.-D.B.C. game, but it was a good game just the same. While we are handing out medals, we should pin a good sportsmanship medal on Ed Blair’s and Roy White’s Hill Billies. What a contrast: their clean, sportsmanlike play and the exhibition of dirty football put up by Texas Tech’s Matadors. As evidence, Johnny Baker received a broken jaw against Tech, but two weeks later he played sixty minutes of good football against the Billies, and none of them played for his jaw!

“Another good sportsmanship medal should go to Nig McCarver. Calling signals for his team in the Southwestern and Daniel Baker games, and being pressed for scoring honors by Lillis of Austin, and Smith of Sourthwestern, he had several chances to cross the goal while within striking distance, but he sent Gibbs and Masur over with the ball. He could have carried the ball for the last touchdown against D.B.C., or he could have sent Masur crashing the line (the logical thing to do), but he sent Johnny Baker (who had not been able to play in either the St. Ed’s or Southwestern games) over for the last touchdown ever scored by the three time champions!”

“Sincerely,”

“Truett Vinson.”

The end of The Junto wasn’t the worst thing to happen to Truett in the early 1930s—on March 3, 1931, his father, Wade D. Vinson (below), died.

Go to Part 6.

[By Rob Roehm; originally posted July 10, 2011 at the REH Two-Gun Raconteur blog. This version updated and expanded.]

Part 3

As mentioned in the last installment, the impact of Klatt’s death appears to have subsided by July 1928. Late that month, Vinson traveled to Waco to visit Juntites Harold Preece and Hildon V. Collins. Preece described the visit to Clyde Smith in a July 26 letter:

I wish you could have been with Truett, Hildon, and myself, the early part of the week. We had a prolonged and interesting session, and nothing was too sacred for the gamut of conversation. Truett also made a very definite impression on Hildon’s girl cousin. Young Lochinvar again come out of the west.

Later that summer, Vinson wrote to his friend in Cross Plains; this is one of only two (I think) letters from Vinson to Howard that survive (envelope at head of post). Again, the letter reveals a wide range of interests, moving from talk of friends and visiting to things he has read and movies he has seen (“Vic McLaglen was disappointing in Hangman’s House, but there was nothing much to the picture”). There is some talk of a Howard poem “on the treatment of whores” which Vinson proclaims “is a dandy.” He also makes it clear that “Hildon’s girl cousin” made an equal impression:

I fear that I am “putting up” with Collins just because I want to remain in the good graces of his cousin!

Late that summer Vinson had a poem accepted by New Masses (he’ll have more to say about this magazine later). The piece appeared in the October 1928 issue.

Meanwhile, one of Vinson’s articles was causing a stir in the pages of The Junto. Probably published in the August 1928 issue, now lost, “Hell Bent” received a longish comment which was published in the October 1928 issue. Under the header “One of the ‘Hell Bent’ Speaks,” we get a taste of what Vinson’s piece contained:

I do not think of anything but drinking (and, my God, what stuff one does get nowadays), and of petting, and of acquiring siphilis [sic.]. I know this is true, for Truett Vinson said so. He is right. That is what I do think of. But I am not a hypocrite about it. I enjoy such things, and I intend to do what I enjoy, for I will go to Hell, anyway.

Signed by “A.M.Y” (“A Modern Youth”), much discussion in the comments section followed, including this, by Vinson himself: “To whom it may concern: I prefer to deal with people who sign their names to their opinions. Will a.m.y. reveal himself or herself? T.V.”

Robert E. Howard mentions the “A.M.Y. business” in a circa October 1928 letter to Clyde Smith:

The reason I’m sending The Junto to you instead of Truett, I want you as a damned personal damned favor to me, see, to put as a comment a slam on this A.M.Y. business about Hell Bent or else a boost for Truett’s article.

Now, I’m full of Virginia Dare, but I know what I’m talking about, see. We three birds are the holy and most revered Original Three and we must stand up for each other.

I have a hunch this A.M.Y. business is about fourteen and smokes corn husk cigarettes out behind the stable and thinks he’s on the high road to Hell.

That November, Vinson spent some time with various friends, in Waco and in Cross Plains.

In the same letter quoted above, Howard mentions that “Booth [Mooney] wants some autobiographies,” and the December 1928 issue contains Vinson’s “The Autobiography of a Bookkeeper”:

Name—Truett Vinson. (Author of “Hell Bent!”, etc. etc.)
Born—September 26, 1905.
Died—Not yet.
Occupation—Bookkeeper—because of the “bread and cheese” I consume, which gives me strength to keep more books, that I may purchase more “bread and cheese,” which enables me—ah, ad infinitum!
Nationality—Irish, Welsh, German.
Religion—Baptist—because of heredity and environment, but I am outgrowing it. Really, I believe in the Golden Rule practiced in regard to sociology, economics, and morals. And I am NOT an atheist.
Politics—Socialist.
Clubs and Societies—Book-of-the-Month Club, Fellowship of Reconciliation, National Council for Prevention of War, Debs’ Memorial Radio Fund, League to Abolish Capital Punishment, Upton Sinclair Loan Fund, National Association Opposed to Blue Laws, Workers’ International Relief.
Reading—From Upton Sinclair, Bernard Shaw, and H. G. Wells to A. Conan Doyle.
Habits—Smoking, drinking.
Weaknesses—Women, Football, and Sherlock Holmes.
Sex Experience—Been kissed by at least three girls! “I’m a lady, by God!”

This issues also contains “The Galveston Affair,” by Bob Howard, which briefly describes the pair’s experience at Galveston’s International Pageant of Pulchritude and Bathing Girl Revue (mentioned in Part 3). After being trampled on by the crowd, Howard relates the following:

Truett swore with an energy that I could not muster on account of the heat. We glared at each other without optimism. We sat—and sat—and sat. Had we been merely waiting for some national hero to appear, we would have given it up and started a general slaughter as a diversion.

But we were there to see legs, and legs we were going to see if we sat there till Hell froze over and the Devil took sleigh rides on the ice.

In an article probably intended for The Junto, Clyde Smith’s “Gods in Arcady” (published in “So Far the Poet”), Smith describes a trip to his uncle’s ranch on the outskirts of Brownwood. Smith, Howard, and Vinson are present, and Clyde provides a few details that help flesh out Truett Vinson. When they arrive at the ranch, it is Truett who “lights the lamp”; the next morning, “[a] fire roars in the kitchen stove, due to Truett’s efforts”; and after taking a swim, Clyde hands Vinson his pants and he “turns around to put them on.”

Besides the above, the trio drink water from the cistern “as horses drink: with relish and noise”; they “go for a ramble in the woods”; and as they settle down for the night, “the conversation shifts to women.” Later, Truett reads to them from The Road to Buenos Aires. Written by French writer and investigative journalist Albert Londres and published in multiple languages in 1927, the book reports on the trafficking of French and Polish women to Buenos Aires, bound for prostitution. It is a vivid account of the trafficking, part factual reporting and part creative writing.

1928 ended with a visit from Harold Preece. Vinson sent him a post card (below) on December 27, saying “Come as soon as you can. We are expecting you. Advise us when you will arrive and someone will meet you.” In correspondence (and The Junto), these visits became known as “reunions” and were often threatened but rarely occurred.

Keeping in mind that Truett had a poem published in New Masses back in October 1928, his comments in the The Junto for January 1929 are interesting:

BOOKS AND THINGS
By Truett Vinson

They tell you poetry will not sell on the book markets, but Stephen Vincent Benet’s latest narrative poem, “John Brown’s Body”, contained in a large book of 377 pages, has been selected by the Book-of-the-Month Club as a first selection, and this assures a sale of practically 75,000 copies. Of course, the selection of this book by the judges of the Book-of-the-Month Club does not mean that the book is necessarily worthy of the perusal of 75,000 readers, but I think that they have not gone far wrong this time. The poem is something of an epic, covering the whole Civil War with one sweep. The critics contend that it is crude in places, and no doubt they are right, but as a whole the poem is virile and moving and stirring. It seems to me that the prelude is almost worth the rest of the book.

Behold! A magazine, supposed to be somewhat “respectable”, hints that Mayor Jimmie Walker of New York City is not exactly the executive and the darling that he is “cracked up” to be by our numerous popular newspapers and magazines. I quote from “The Film Spectator”, edited by one Welford Beaton, Hollywood, California, the issue of August 18th: “Everyone, so it seems, seems to agree that New York is the greatest ‘boob’ town on earth. Close contact with Jimmie Walker, whom it selected as its mayor, is the strongest proof that has yet been advanced in support of the charge.”

The new “New Masses” under the editorship of Michael Gold is a haven for those writers (and readers!) who are not smart (sic!) enough and cultured enough to find a place in the pages of our commercially dictated magazines. If you want to get to the real depth and truth of America, I advise you to regularly read “New Masses”. What a relief to pick up so virile and vital a magazine after turning the advertising pages of “Liberty” with its ancient caption at the head of the editorial page, that “patriotic” and imperialistic utterance of Stephen F. Decatur.

The same Michael Gold, editor of “New Masses”, finds himself as a character in Upton Sinclair’s new book, “Boston”. With nothing added to him and nothing subtracted from him. Just plain Michael Gold, in his younger days, of course. “Boston” was published last month, a mammoth two-volume book selling for five dollars. Sinclair tells the inside story of the Sacco-Vanzetti case and other “things” about Boston and America in general. I predict that it will make more firm and more certain his place which he now holds in American literature: A great writer, and one of the major prophets of America.

The April 24, 1929 Brownwood Bulletin has “Truett Vinson has returned from San Antonio, where he spent the week-end.” A few weeks later, the Cross Plains Review for May 10, 1929 tells us that “Clyde Smith and Truett Vinson of Brownwood spent week end with Robert Howard.”

Booth Mooney was the editor of The Junto until April or May of 1929, but after January 1929, none of his issues survive. Harold Preece’s sister, Lenore, revived the travelogue in June. The second of her issues, July 1929, has Vinson’s “An Open Letter to Texas’ Governor”:

1409 Second Street,
Brownwood, Texas.
June 9th, 1929.

Hon. Dan Moody,
Governor of Texas,
Austin, Texas.

My Dear Sir:

Aren’t you consulting only a small minority of Texas people when you take such a method of eradicating the dreaded “prize fight” from this state? Aren’t you consulting only those good brethren who exclaim loudly against Sunday movies, but whose children never enter church doors, instead parking their drunken cars on dark roadways?

You state that by encouraging prize fights we may bring a big championship bout to Texas, and that would be highly undesirable. But would it? The state needs something to make it alive! It is deader than Nevada!

As time passes, we have more censorships thrust upon us. In a few more years we’ll merely be automatons rushing to and from daily toil—nothing more. Now we can’t indulge in the sight of two physical giants battering each other, because it would bring an undesirable element among our already rotting youth. Instead I suppose we shall only be greeted by such manly contests as the recently invented yo-yo contest, in which the contestant sees how long he can dangle a silly little toy on a string, the meanwhile he is being fed milk through a straw!

Yours very sincerely,

Truett Vinson

That same month, another “reunion” between Howard, Vinson, Smith, and “Harold Creese” (obviously Preece) occurred:

The August 1929 Junto has Vinson’s “Movie Notes”:

The Vitaphone and Movietone may mark the era of a greater motion picture, but if sound pictures are to appease the appetites of people above the type of comic section habitues, the producers must change their ideas. Now they are calling in the theme song boys, those song and dance lads with the mentalities of George Jessels and Al Jolson, while the great artists of the screen, Emil Jannings and Charles Chaplin, are idle. Emil cannot speak English and Charlie doesn’t like sound pictures. He is supposed to be making a picture now, the story of a tramp’s love for a beautiful and blind flower girl, but it seems that he is hesitating because of the public’s now clamorous demand for sound, and he is essentially a pantomimic artist. I say, a picture with either Emil Jannings or Charlie Chaplin is worth all the stuff they are giving us now in sound!

Another thing: With sound pictures at their present status, the moving picture will be only a medium for American stories of the present time. What sense would there be in a magnificent costume picture of another country, and American slang phrases hopping all over the place? And of course they won’t give us pictures depicting people in other countries in their true linguistic settings because the American public pays at the box office, and they won’t pay for such pictures.

I am not ordinarily an awe-struck movie fan, and I hasten to assure you that I don’t indulge in movie “crushes,” but I have a weakness for Nancy Carroll [below], first, (really!) because of her very fine and versatile histrionic ability and then because she is red-headed and Irish and has pretty legs. So I sat down and wrote her what I considered a really sensible note, referring only to the first reason for my admiring her, and incidentally offering the suggestion that in the future she have them place the microphone so her voice will properly record all she is singing or saying. (Perhaps you have noticed this fault in Abie’s Irish Rose and The Shopworn Angel?) My awaited reply to this letter consists of a bunch of words printed on a government post card, thus:

“Dear Friend:

I have your note and want to thank you very much for taking so much interest in me and my screen work.

I wish I could send you free of charge the photograph you desire, but because so many thousands of requests have been coming in of late, I have found it compulsory to ask my friends to help defray the actual expense of the photographs desired. If you care to do this, I will be indeed happy to send you any of the following variety of photos for the sum mentioned:” (Then she goes on with her price list, consisting of several sizes of her pictures.)

Oh! shades of Erin Isle and Terrence McSweeney! I didn’t want one of her pictures! My red-headed Irish movie star must have gotten fleas from Sandy MacDuff!

At the end of August, Truett took a trip to Colorado.

Go to Part 5.